Thus we shall never experience our relationship to the essence of technology so long as we merely represent and pursue the technological, put up with it, or evade it. Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral….

For every bringing-forth is grounded in revealing (poiesis). Bringing-forth, indeed, gathers within itself the four modes of occasioning— causality—and rules them throughout. Within its domain belong end and means as well as instrumentality. Instrumentality is considered to be the fundamental characteristic of technology. If we inquire step by step into what technology, represented as means, actually is, then we shall arrive at revealing. The possibility of all productive manufacturing lies in revealing… Technology is a way of revealing.

…techne is the name not only for the activities and skills of the craftsman but also for the arts of the mind and the fine arts. Techne belongs to bringing-forth, to poiesis; it is something poetic.

Technology is a mode of revealing. Technology comes to presence in the realm where revealing and unconcealment take place, where aletheia, truth, happens.

The revealing that rules in modern technology is a challenging
[Herausfordern], which puts to nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy which can be extracted and stored as such…This setting-upon that challenges the energies of nature is an expediting, and in two ways. It expedites in that it unlocks and exposes. Yet that expediting is always itself directed from the beginning toward furthering something else, i.e., toward driving on to the maximum yield at the minimum expense. 

— excerpt The Question Concerning Technology by Martin Heidegger

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Some photos of the grand children’s carved pumpkin creations are juxtaposed with Heidegger’s words about technology, about the application of modern technology in particular.

I like all of the pumpkins.  The small ones were decorated by the youngest, a ten month old child with the help of her parents.  The three larger pumpkins were carved by older children.  Note that the middle pumpkin is carved with a burning flame theme and dated 2020.  Little imagination is required to understand the reference.

I am attracted to the treatment of the pumpkin placed at the bottom.  A carving knife still penetrates the side of the orange vegetable.  There is always a knife, somewhere, if you look for it.  The image symbolizes for me the conflict within human nature.  I am reminded of the last quote from Heidegger: the modern variant of technology is violent, aggressive, extractive, unreasonably demanding, “driving on to the maximum yield at the minimum expense.”